Hilary Wainwright is supporting AV 'as an opportunity to open up a process of structural political change'. As readers of this blog will know, I'm also supporting AV, though my first reason for doing so is that I think it's fairer than FPTP. So I'm on the same side as Hilary in this. But there are two things she says in making the case that I don't agree with. She writes:
Parliament's numbness to the million-strong march against the Iraq war has left a legacy of profound scepticism about parliamentary politics as we know it.
It isn't the function of a representative assembly to exactly reflect the will of a mass demonstration. This is even assuming that the latter gives an accurate expression of opinion in the country at large. As it happens the march against the Iraq war didn't do that, since opinion was divided.
Hilary also writes:
A no vote to electoral reform would send out all the wrong messages, and be trumpeted as evidence that the British public is broadly content with our politics.
Wrong messages? I don't know about its showing contentment with our politics, but a no vote would show that a majority of those who cared enough to vote preferred to keep FPTP. That would be a legitimate democratic verdict, wouldn't it?
